Wait a minute – who is to blame?
When something “unfair” happens, it is human nature to not only find reason in what can seem absurd but also to be able to blame someone for the unfairness. After the lasts bust everyone have been looking for the reason to why the bobble busted, beside the obvious one, namely that it is what bobbles does. Some blames the politicians for not being good enough in regulating the financial markets. Others blame the financial markets for wanting to make a “too big” of a profit. Some even blames the wealthy for … well still being wealthy. Everyone is looking for someone to blame, someone other than themselves.
So to satisfy this thirst for placing the blame the Danish government announced yesterday that they have tasked some experts to examine the financial crisis and tell everyone who we should blame for everything going so badly. Was it the high salaries that the banking managers amassed? Or is there something wrong with the business model of the financial institutions? Or even better can we make new regulation that will ensure that we never will see another bust again?
Let me be the first to predict what the panels of experts will conclude. Yes we are all to blame, you and I, everyone that interacted in the market where all a part of the naive belief that the house prices never will go down. We all conjectured that tomorrow always will be better than yesterday and therefor we don’t need to contemplate ahead. There are no more rainy days so why did we need to save up for them? But in reality they rainy days did come; the house prices did go down. Not because we didn’t have enough regulation, or because banking managers got an extra million in salary. Yes we are all to blame, but we will never accept that, so in the end we shall blame someone, and create more regulation in a naive attempt to keep the bobbles form bursting.
But, the bobbles will burst, because it is what bobbles do.
So to satisfy this thirst for placing the blame the Danish government announced yesterday that they have tasked some experts to examine the financial crisis and tell everyone who we should blame for everything going so badly. Was it the high salaries that the banking managers amassed? Or is there something wrong with the business model of the financial institutions? Or even better can we make new regulation that will ensure that we never will see another bust again?
Let me be the first to predict what the panels of experts will conclude. Yes we are all to blame, you and I, everyone that interacted in the market where all a part of the naive belief that the house prices never will go down. We all conjectured that tomorrow always will be better than yesterday and therefor we don’t need to contemplate ahead. There are no more rainy days so why did we need to save up for them? But in reality they rainy days did come; the house prices did go down. Not because we didn’t have enough regulation, or because banking managers got an extra million in salary. Yes we are all to blame, but we will never accept that, so in the end we shall blame someone, and create more regulation in a naive attempt to keep the bobbles form bursting.
But, the bobbles will burst, because it is what bobbles do.
